By Riana McConochie, Third year, English
Do you feel that the grades you achieve are reflective of the effort you put in? Or, do you find it impossible to predict the outcome of an assignment?
Each student has their own approach to the university exam period. Over any given 24-hour stretch, the Arts and Social Sciences Library (aka 'The ASS') sees a revolving door of university students with a wide range of studying habits.
You’ve got the particularly disciplined early birds, arriving at 9am sharp to secure a seat before they fill up and working steadily until a sensible hour like 6pm, all while managing to maintain a healthy sleep schedule. On the other hand, as these students pack up for the day, the more daring night owls start to trickle in, ready to take on the overnight shift. These are the students who always manage to miraculously cram a 3,000-word essay into a single night and still somehow pass with flying colours.
Regardless of which group you tend to fall into, one thing remains true: not all effort leads to excellence, and not all excellence is a result of visible effort. Especially in primarily coursework-based degree subjects, comparison can very quickly become the thief of joy. When working back-to-back days in the library, both alongside your friends and running into familiar faces from your course, it can be very easy to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to your academic peers. You may find yourself asking - Do I spend enough time in the library? Can I afford to take a day off? Am I where I should be on this assignment?
All of these questions can lead you to spiral and potentially face disappointment if the grade you receive for a certain module doesn’t reflect the countless hours spent staring at a screen in the library. It can be discouraging, and even infuriating, to see someone who only began the assignment three days before the deadline walk away with a better mark. It is important to remember that your grades don’t define you and they often don’t tell the whole story. Sometimes they may surprise you, for better or for worse, but they never fully capture the process and academic progress. Whilst it is natural to seek academic validation, the university grading system doesn’t always reward persistent effort in a clear or notable way, particularly in the more subjective, essay-based subjects. With some students putting many hours into researching, drafting and refining their work only for the grade to misrepresent the energy they had invested, and others adopting a more last-minute approach and still securing high marks, it is expected that students would begin to question the fairness of the system. This disconnect between effort and results can lead to feelings of inadequacy, but it is important to maintain a healthy and productive balance between studying and everything else. Pulling all-nighters may seem like a sure display of dedication, but it is not always the most effective means of studying. It is easy to get swept up by the idea of having every waking hour revolve around your studies but without a healthy balance, productivity levels will likely suffer.
This lack of correlation between effort and results can often appear within your own work, with it sometimes feeling like a lottery where the level of effort you put in hardly factors. Sometimes the work you’re especially proud of ends up disappointing, and the work you had no hope in the world for ends up getting you a surprising first! While this can be disheartening, perhaps there is some reason behind it. Is it a product of overworking your writing? Is it the case that you have simply been staring at the same piece of work for a few too many weeks, and are starting to doubt yourself?
While the grade you receive may feel like the be-all and end-all, it's crucial to acknowledge that everyone learns at different paces and in different ways and that ultimately, regardless of effort or excellence, you are worth more than your grades.
